Case Study: drugstore.com achieves a scalable, cost-saving e-commerce platform and improved operational efficiency with Avanade

Drugstore.Com Increases Operational Efficiency, Service Quality

drugstore.com is a leading online retailer of health, beauty and vision products that had grown rapidly (U.S. $412M net sales in 2009) but was running some 20 consumer sites on nearly a decade of legacy code. The aging platform limited scalability, increased maintenance costs, slowed feature delivery, and constrained the company’s plans to expand partnerships and launch new niche e-commerce sites.

Partnering with Avanade, drugstore.com re‑architected its webstore to modern Microsoft technologies (WARP), introduced a rapid enhancement process (STAR) and centralized production support (QFE), and used a repeatable “playbook” to launch new sites. The work delivered an extensible, scalable platform, faster time‑to‑market and lower costs — including 75% closure of long‑standing issues, a 55% reduction in issue age, an 80% improvement in SLA targets, 11 STAR releases and six new sites — enabling increased operational efficiency, service quality and business agility.

Drugstore.com

Luke Friang

VP and Chief Information Officer, drugstore.com, inc